Mother wins battle for life-prolonging cancer drugs...but it's too late for her to benefit from them

Monday 28 January 2008 01:37 BST

A cancer patient who is fighting for the right to pay for a life-prolonging drug has run out of time to benefit from it.

In the four months that Colette Mills has been pleading for Avastin, the disease has taken such a hold on her body that it would no longer respond to the treatment.

The former nurse and mother of two is determined, however, to continue her legal action against health chiefs.

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Colette Mills: Health chiefs guilty of 'Double standards'

She says she wants to help others and secure her right to pay for any cures under development.

Mrs Mills, 58, learnt in September that she could not have Avastin on the Health Service.

She offered to pay the £4,000-amonth bill herself but was told she would then be liable for the full bill for all her care - an estimated £15,000 a month.

Unable to afford this, she and her husband Eric, an advertising agency boss, took their case to court.

In the meantime, her cancer has become much more aggressive.

Yesterday, her lawyer Melissa Worth, from Halliwells, said: "Colette has been told by her medical team that she may have missed her chance.

"If she had been given the opportunity to take the Avastin when she first contacted her medical team about it, then she would have had three months of treatment by now."

Mrs Mills has been battling breast cancer for three decades and the disease has reached her hips, spine and liver.

She has been taking another medicine, Taxol, on the NHS which she had wanted to combine with Avastin because tests show that the two together can double the length of time cancer is kept under control.

Ten days ago, doctors said her treatment with Taxol was no longer working - making it too late to combine it with Avastin.

Mrs Mills will be prescribed an alternative medicine but does not know how successful it will be in stopping the disease.

"I am just absolutely gutted," said Mrs Mills, who lives in Hutton Rudby in North Yorkshire.

"I just cannot believe people make these decisions about other people's lives.

"In the last four months that they have been dragging their heels, they have denied me the opportunity of using Avastin.

"I was not asking them to spend money, I am prepared to pay for it.

"Now it has probably cost them more because they have had to employ solicitors."

Mrs Mills is preparing to take South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust and North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust to court to secure her right to pay for extra drugs.

"I want the right to co-pay because research means things are changing all the time," she said.

"There might be something that is being developed now that could help me in the future.

"It is not just me - it is an injustice for others.

"We need to take this legal action. But I lie awake worrying about the fact that if I lose the case, I would be forced to pay a huge bill for costs."

The Department of Health says it is against private payment for drugs because it would lead to a two-tier NHS.

Officials have pointed out that those unable to afford extra treatment would miss out.

Mrs Mills said health chiefs had been guilty of "double standards" in deeming that a private scan she paid for was a "top up" - yet treating Avastin as an "add on".